Many electrical components include one or more printed circuit boards. At their narrow sides the latter have one or two rows of bores or holes. They are metallized or tin-plated and electrically connected to the conductor traces. They serve for connecting the conductor traces of the printed circuit board to another component or for the connection thereof to the conductor traces of another printed circuit board. Flexible multi-conductor connecting cables are used for a flexible connection of that kind between two printed circuit boards, such cables also being referred to as a jumper or data bus. Short portions of a multi-conductor flat cable are commonly used.
In such a cable, the individual conductors are disposed in side-by-side relationship at equal mutual spacings. The ends of the conductors are stripped of insulation. Insulative bar members may be injection-molded onto those stripped ends, at both ends of the portion of connecting cable. The bar members stabilize the connecting cable portions which generally are only very short. At the same time they stabilize and hold the stripped ends of the conductors in their reference or desired position. The stripped ends project with a portion beyond the bar members. In storage, transportation and also insertion of the stripped ends into the holes in a printed circuit board, such ends may be damaged or even only bent away. That means that the ends can then no longer be easily inserted into the metallized holes at the edge of a printed circuit board.
Guide bar members are sometimes used to facilitate that insertion operation, in the state of the art. The guide bar members are fitted onto the holes at the edge of a printed circuit board, and latched thereto. A guide bar member has a base portion with openings which are aligned with the holes in the printed circuit board. Disposed on the bottom portion are two legs which define a gap between them. The bar member of the connecting cables is pushed into that gap. As such, the stripped ends of the conductors, which project beyond the bar member, are aligned with the openings in the guide bar member and thus the holes in the printed circuit board. In addition, the bar member is guided when it is further inserted into the guide bar member and pushed onto the printed circuit board. However that guidance effect is not successful if the stripped ends of the individual conductors, which project beyond the bar member, were bent during storage, transportation or some handling of the connecting cable.